WikiLeaks Supporters' Twitter Accounts Subpoenaed 391
HJED writes "The US Justice Department has served Twitter with a subpoena for the personal information and private messages of WikiLeaks supporters. There's a copy of the subpoena here (PDF); boing boing has a detailed article. Twitter has 3 days to turn over the information."
There is a threat to democracy! (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a threat to democracy, quick, suspend all civil liberties!
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How does Twitter being served a subpoena suspend anyone's civil liberties? While it's true that you're allowed to say anything you want, it is another matter when crimes have been committed. A subpoena could expose those crimes. Please notice I said "could" and not "will". Just because you happen to agree with what Wikileaks does, doesn't mean that some people connected with Wikileaks haven't committed any crimes as defined by US law.
It should be no surprise that if you use any services from companies o
Re:There is a threat to democracy! (Score:5, Interesting)
So, it's ok for authorities to lie, cheat, bribe, kill, torture, etc, and the very act of exposing them is a crime punishable by death or life imprisonment?
It's also ok for authorities to use surveillance, covert-operations, false flag operations, etc., to ensure "peace and prosperity".
You're so fucked.. Just watch your country go down in flames, and the same fucking politicians stepping up and "saving it", from the problems of their own creation!
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Subpoenaing Private Manning in this case is not unusual. He is involved in a criminal investigation.
I am not familiar with all of the other names on that short list. The ones I am familiar with are not US citizens. Non US citizens outside of the territory of the US do not have any of the same rights that US cit
Re:There is a threat to democracy! (Score:4, Insightful)
Non US citizens outside of the territory of the US do not have any of the same rights that US citizens have.
The Declaration of independence opens with these words:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights..."
So clearly, the rights enshrined in US law are intended to apply to all humans. And this gets to the heart of "rights," whether in the sense of US law, or the more international conception of "human rights." They are meaningless unless they apply to everybody. If something is a (human) right, then why would it only apply to people who are citizens of a certain nation? If you hold any belief in the notion, they should apply to people regardless of country of origin.
Re:There is a threat to democracy! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There is a threat to democracy! (Score:4, Insightful)
The constitution is clear and careful with the wording it uses. When it means citizen - it uses the word 'citizen'. Most of the bill of rights uses the term 'people' not citizens. It means what it says. The US simply does not have jurisdiction over most people outside of the US, there is nothing in the constitution to imply that those people not not have those rights.
Not all rights are inalienable, and since some of these rights have been granted to US citizens only, it is not wrong to say that citizens have more rights than non-citizens. The right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures does not fall into this category.
T
Lol yeah (Score:3)
Sometimes, I think I must have picked a very bad nick. I'm definately not inside the herd-think that is in here at least (phew for that ;)
I certainly will not justify government actions that is provably among those listed, and I think being scanned on social medium owned by corporations, by the government, just reeks of McCarthyism all over again. Especially so, when Wikileaks itself has broken NO LAWS. This is abuse, and will be abused, by people in high positions that want to cover their asses. If this is
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After the two world wars, in both cases the US entered from a position of originally not wanting to get involved in foreign conflicts, the US went to Vietnam, the debarkle that was Iran/Iraq, Central America, Libya, Iraq again twice. Oh and Isreal.
In the case of
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Finally a voice that passes the sanity checks. The other thing I find either illuminating or conspiratorial is that all of the wailing over things like ECHELON [wikipedia.org], COINTELPRO [wikipedia.org], Carnivore [wikipedia.org] and Patriot Act [wikipedia.org] seems to be much ado over nothing because either the Feds still have to do significant amounts of good old fashioned legwork to get anything done or do it anyways to cover up how easy it is to do it now.
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Perhaps what Wikileaks is doing by publishing these documents is not a violation of US law. IANAL.
However the means by which these documents reached Wikileaks is very probably a violation of US law. I am sure that US investigative agencies are very interested and are quite justified in gathering as much information as possible as to how that happened.
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There is a threat to the twitterati, quick, suspend all consequences for the stupid believing they were anonymous! Sorry to report your very nonymous. Duhaa
b/tard is that you?
Re:There is a threat to democracy! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a fishing expedition for the purpose of a political trial.
There corrected it for you.
And people are railing against specific actions and attitudes of the US government, which now, thanks in large part to Wikileaks, are very well documented reasons as well.
Shouldn't have a leg to stand on (Score:5, Insightful)
Individuals are entitled to say as they wish to each other in their private lives, the moment that is stopped in the name of 'national security' when they are discussing politics is when you should get the hell out.
To where is the only real question.
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There are tons of things which shouldn't have a leg to stand on either. Doesn't stop anyone* from doing it does it?
Good thing America is democratic! Pity the people seem to have lost their teeth a while back.
*hums* The land of the free.... and the home of the brave *hums*
*US government/MPAA/RIAA/TSA
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Anyone notice Obama is acting a lot like Bush lately? I would have expected a "give me your damn twitter accounts!" coming from the Bush government, but not under Obama who was supposed to end that nonsense. ALSO I wonder what the politicians fear wikileaks so much? I'm tempted to set-up a twitter account and "friend" Wikileaks just for the sake of solidarity. Maybe they'll come after facebook next. Or Michael Moore (he supports the website).
.
>>>Move to where is the only real question
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and Australia/Canada are less free then even the US. (Australia is filtering the net, arrests people who DRAW sex images of children,
Settle down sport - there's no need to exaggerate. BigPuddle censors the 'net, but that entirely voluntary.
Just wait till *our*( National Broadband Network comes on line. We're gunna raise some eyebrows then. [theage.com.au] We'll see who's laughing at us then.... [mutters - bloody yanks]
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and Australia/Canada are less free then even the US. (Australia is filtering the net, arrests people who DRAW sex images of children,
Settle down sport - there's no need to exaggerate. BigPuddle censors the 'net, but that entirely voluntary.
If this is exaggeration and voluntary come to Germany. Here is drawn child pornography and written fictional stories treated as the real thing.
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Anyone notice Obama is acting a lot like Bush lately?
He is not acting like Bush, he is acting like an American president.
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He is not acting like Bush, he is acting like an American president.
If that is how you imagine American president should act like, you people are in serious trouble.
Not how American presidents should act like, but how they act like. Regardless of name. The differences are marginal so if does not make sense to say 'Obama is acting like Bush' when he actually acts just like an average American president. Bush was not much worse than any president before him and Obama isn't much better.
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Stop persisting this myth about Internet in Australia - seriously I swear everyone on Slashdot saw one article about it and therefore thinks it exists.
It was proposed by a couple of senators. It was widely unpopular and the government knew it. It contributed to the Labor party almost losing the 2010 election. Mandatory filtering as a political position is essentially dead and buried - it never actually even got introduced as a BILL into Parliament, let alone passed into law. There's no way in hell it would
Re:Shouldn't have a leg to stand on (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Shouldn't have a leg to stand on (Score:5, Informative)
Under the Bush administration, they wouldn't have gotten a subpoena. Because they believed the President had unlimited powers when at war.
Not that I'm thrilled with his performance, but a lot of that is the fault of people like you for failing to comprehend that there are differences, even if they're not as substantial as they ought to be. And at any rate, this is still a lot better than what McCain was offering up.
Additionally, he has limited power as the President, he's been trying to close GITMO, but without the ability to move at least some of the inmates to US courts for trial and possible incarceration, it's really hard to get other countries to buy into taking them off our hands. Which is totally shocking that they'd expect us to eat our own cooking.
Re:Shouldn't have a leg to stand on (Score:5, Informative)
Australia is filtering the net
No we're not, the necessary legislation was never even introduced to parliament. Even if it was, and somehow managed to get voted through, it would be killed in the senate due to the changes brought about during the recent election - the government got its arse kicked over issues like this.
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Funnily enough I never said Internet Censorship had been defeated for ever and ever. I simply pointed out that Australia does not currently censor the internet and won't under the current political situation.
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State run, newscorp run, what's the difference?
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Sometimes freedom is little more than an illusion deliberately foisted off on those who can't measure the cage in which they operate.
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Nobody has stopped freedom of speech. The subpoena is used to determine if a crime has occurred. Nobody has been charged with anything. I'd recommend a different action than "getting the hell out". Get elected and change the laws.
Re:Shouldn't have a leg to stand on (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd recommend a different action than "getting the hell out". Get elected and change the laws.
Anyone who is ruthless enough to actually be elected normally does not deserve the position. To win you must be a master of both public speaking and doublespeak. After concessions are made to your ethics in order to gain the required popularity to win it is a slippery slope and by the time you get there (if you do) you become just as bad as those that were in power before you.
Not saying I have the solution to it, only that there are another set of problems to think about.
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Weakie leaks has endangered many lives - espionage is not free speech.
The discussion of political implications of the leaks of internal government stuff is now espionage hey? We are talking about people discussing and being in favour of what wikileaks has done, ignoring whether you think what it has done is good or bad, you think that people agreeing with it politically should be enough to let the government have it's way with them too?
Wikileaks was also not involved in any espionage themselves, those that gave them the information may have but that is irrelevent to wiki leak
Icelandic MP supeanad (Score:5, Informative)
Looks like they are requesting personal data of an Icelandic Member of Parliment [guardian.co.uk]
I see a minor diplomatic incident on the horizon.
Re:Icelandic MP supeanad (Score:5, Informative)
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Diplomats or CIA agents with official cover? Sometimes it's hard to tell a difference...
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I don't know if she was caught actually stealing credit card numbers but she did request other US diplomats to steal the credit card numbers (and DNA samples among other things) of foreign diplomats.
Re:Icelandic MP supeanad (Score:5, Funny)
They do not have nukes, they have volcanoes.
When they triggered one of them last year, it caused a lot more disruption to European air traffic than 9/11 did to US air traffic. And they know how to use their volcanoes right: During the incident Reykjavik airport was one of the few airports in Europe still open.
I am pretty sure this was retaliation against the Brits abusing anti-terror legislation to freeze Icelandic assets.
If you do not understand satire, you should not have read this...
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They do not have nukes, they have volcanoes.
Weapons and power sources.... me thinks they might have to be freed from the yoke of oppression. Anarchy is yesterday's Communism.
What is this satire thing you speak of? Is there a newsletter?
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When picking out a location for your secret base for world domination, use a regular volcano, NOT a skull shaped one. It's much easier to get away with it.
Evil Overlord [eviloverlord.com] FAIL.
"171. I will not locate a base in a volcano, cave, or any other location where it would be ridiculously easy to bypass security by rappelling down from above."
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the US doesn't like foreign policy. That's why they think they're trying to take over the world, that way there would be no foreign policy.
Just another day... (Score:2, Interesting)
... in the US government's life of doing whatever the hell they want without a court involved if they're caught with their pants down. But that's not what's scary - it's that this will happen without objections, other than a silent whisper from the victims here, effectively quenched by a public that wants to read more about Khloe Kardashian getting her own reality show. Heck, it hasn't even been established in a court that what has been leaked could be endangering lives. But who cares?
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RTFA: There was a court order
RTFAA (again): there only was a court order because Twitter chose to get the courts involved. The original request came directly from the government.
And you say there were no objections, but there were, by Twitter, who insisted that the subjects of the court-ordered release of data be given notice and the opportunity to appeal.
Indeed. The initial request was for Twitter to turn over the information without even notifying the victims. Twitter declined, and the court agreed with them.
Also, the court does not have to find that there are lives in danger when issuing a subpoena, only that there is reason to believe that a criminal act has occurred.
Of course. That's not to stop the propaganda machine from saying otherwise, though.
Twitter knew since December 14th (Score:5, Informative)
Twitter has known about this for >3 weeks, but they were forbidden to tell the affected persons about it. It seems like to they had to go to court just to give them this information.
News like this just makes me sad about the state of liberties in the USA.
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Is there an obvious follow-up question which need to be raised: What other organisations have been similarly subpoenaed but didn't or haven't been able to challenge it. Is it really realsitic that this is only about twitter?
To quote Padme... (Score:2)
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Re:To quote Padme... (Score:4, Informative)
Mosey around the intertubz for a while. Slashdot has been keeping the discussion "reasonable" in comparison to some of the other forums out there. Seems to be quite a few people who would like nothing better then to send anyone even remotely involved straight to gitmo for some "enhanced questioning."
Re:To quote Padme... (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a lot of people out there that are either deluded into thinking that they can't accidentally be accused or don't care as long as one of the accused is actually guilty and is willing to toss the others under the bus to get a conviction.
Hey Remember in those books... (Score:5, Insightful)
When you have a facist/nazi/evil/whatever state you have people getting taken from their homes for not supporting the glorious leader/fuhrer/overlord/whatever and protesting?
Good times.
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Strange it doens't seem to be there anymore
Re:Hey Remember in those books... (Score:4, Funny)
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Forget fiction, how about real [wikipedia.org] US-supported [wikipedia.org] regimes [wikipedia.org]? I should point out that I could have picked plenty of others, those were just the ones that came to mind.
Encrypt? (Score:2)
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Its one way, you send the data out.
Their irc had SSL encryption. Once its 'public', chat away.
Twitter was to spread... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Evan Williams [co-founder of Twitter] says Twitter fundamental to government"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8563109.stm [bbc.co.uk]
"open exchange of information will prevail in most regions, but we don't have any specific plans in China or other areas where we're blocked"
All sounded so cool when it was aimed at
Welcome back to reality. Enjoy the gems from WikiLeaks, note whats missing and welcome to the honeypot.
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perhaps someone show go tweet some support for Wikileaks. would love to see the state department renig on their promise if that were to become the most re-tweeted.
I'd hand it to the Justice Department immediately (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, at least, I'd hand them a gigantic picture of a whale. "Sorry, your legal standing is over capacity."
Re:I'd hand it to the Justice Department immediate (Score:4, Interesting)
Twitter has been ordered to produce
The following customer or subscriber account information for each account associated with Wikileaks; ...
Were I Twitter, I would send them thousands of account records -- Every user that has ever mentioned Wikileaks via Twitter [twitter.com] and let them sort it out themselves.
The order said they must produce the information, but did not specify that the info must not be anonymized, or mixed in with thousands of other accounts.
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All that would get you is a hefty fine for deliberately misinterpreting the subpoena to waste the state's time.
What??? (Score:5, Insightful)
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So they are demanding the personal information of a Non-US citizen, that's not in the country and did not access Twitter from within the United States? Nor did any of them commit any sort of crime on US soil. Could a middle eastern country charge my wife for wearing a bikini to the beach in Florida and then demand her personal information from Twitter?
You could test it by painting a picture of the Prophet on her belly and posting the video on Youtube.... is Saudi Arabia in the middle east?
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Ive used this same argument before, Im not surprised no one has responded.
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It's the fact that Twitter (and its servers) are in the U.S. that gives them the ability to do this.
amazing (Score:2)
I love how a document marked "Limited Official Use" makes it onto the internet and then here, I guess the biggest problem with our government is apparently nobody can read....
The need for psychiatric evaluation of gov... (Score:2, Insightful)
What is happening here is the application of war tactics applied by the US defense department, only Wikileaks has no WMD's only words. Perhaps the defense department can justify its military spending by using its stock of WMD's???
There is a genuine and serious need for psychiatric evaluation, constraints and care of what is apparently many in government, specifically the defense department and defense contractors like Halliburton.
Consider the following and how so far out of line it really is, to the point o
Re:The need for psychiatric evaluation of gov... (Score:5, Insightful)
What's wrong with this picture?
The fact that you posted shortened urls, that no one is gonna look at?
Re:The need for psychiatric evaluation of gov... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think Slashcode should auto-detect these idiotic URL shorteners and either just refuse to accept them like it does for "all caps" posts and the like or preemptively down-mod the post by 2 points at least...
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That would open up an attack vector on Slashdot itself by making it access potentially malicious websites. At present there is no need for Slashcode to attempt connections anywhere.
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Not that surprising. The whole free market/neocon/neo-liberal agenda is an almost exact one on one match with the diagnostic criteria for sociopathy. I can already predict one of the outcomes of such a psychiatric evaluation: a significantly above average percentage of sociopathic tendencies. That's bad enough but most of us have had decades of sociopathic indoctrination in the form of exposure to this political ideology (Americans more so than others) so even people who do not have intrinsic sociopathic te
Re:The need for psychiatric evaluation of gov... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not just values, it's the entire skewed outlook on history and the role of the government.
It's a crazy outlook, where taxes are a violation of rights, but, you know, detaining people without charging them for crime is not.
I just want to shake the goddamn Tea Party idiots and say 'Do you actually know why we revolted from England? And if you say 'taxes' I will shoot you in head.'
Does anyone need more reason to quit social media? (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything you say or do can and will be used against you in a court of law. The connections you make, the things you read, everything. The government has too much power and by indulging in these useless social media activities, people are making themselves into potential targets by participating in them. Say you were curious about wikileaks and subscribed to Assange's twitter. Well guess what, now the government knows who you are, you are on yet another list and only because you were curious about what he had to say.
I'm not condemning social media as much as I am condemning this sort of behavior from government. But while the government IS behaving this way, people should be more careful in response.
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The potential targets is spot on. Flush people out by helping their generations "Pentagon papers" via the anonymity of the internet.
Rememeber 2007! (Score:5, Interesting)
May be twitter can use that as a defense?
Re:Rememeber 2007! (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course not! When it's China doing it, then it's "the bad guys". When it's USA, it's "the good guys".
Do as we tell you, but don't do as we do..
Quash (Score:2)
U.S. Department of Comedy _ (Score:2)
"IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the application and this Order are sealed until otherwise ordered by the Court, and that Twitter shall not disclose the existence of the application or this Order of the Court, or the existence of the investigation, to the listed subscriber or to any other person, unless and until authorized to do so by the Court"
_ and within a couple of hours you can find the copy all over the Net, as usual. Another bright action from the U.S. Dep
Before everybody jumps to conclusions (Score:3)
Before everybody jumps to conclusions, from the actual subpoena, the information being turned over is contact information - names, mailing addresses, methods of payment, if applicable, ip addresses, etc., specifically excluded is the content of the tweets. In short, it appears they are 1) trying to see where the data came from -- if US, then US laws pervail, 2) how to contact individuals and 3) if money exchanged hands, from what countries did that occur.
These are all things that any investigation would look at. If this were 30 years ago, the subpoena would be to the phone companies instead of Twitter.
Since it was announced some time ago that the DOJ was investigating the leaks, there isn't any news here. If they had hacked Twitter to get the information, then that would have been newsworthy, but as it stands, it appears that the DOJ is following the laws in the US to obtain the information they are wanting in their investigation.
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:5, Interesting)
That's actually a bigger worry IMHO than whatever random stuff is on Twitter. The flow of cables from Wikileaks has dried up. They hardly released any at all since the new year.
Given that only 2000 of them have been released out of 250,000 they need to be stepping up the pace dramatically if they want these cables to ever see the light of day. But the exact opposite is happening. Is the biggest leak in history destined to actually be the smallest thanks to infighting and problems at Wikileaks, I wonder?
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I suspect that one of the problems they are having is manpower; they need the 'big' news organizations to help them sift through all the cables and see what can be released and whether those need redacting, but those organizations are now very busy handling the news around the whole affair. And the wikileaks people themselves may be a bit preoccupied with several legal procedures. There are other internal problems at wikileaks but I do not think that those are the only reasons the flow seems to dry out.
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Of course part of the problem here is that they really don't use the "wiki" in Wikileaks. At least in theory they were going to be using wiki or wiki-like tools that would let newcommers and ordinary people help with the processing of the information, but apparently that has been thrown out the window. Yes, it started that way, but it isn't any more.
Certainly something like Distributed Proofreaders [pgdp.net] could help in processing the information, to show what a "crowdsourcing" model or at least community devel
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:4, Interesting)
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Why not? Supposedly the whole point of Wikileaks is to uncover secrets and to push them into the open, not to be gatekeepers over what is secret.
There is some legitimate concern over protecting the privacy of "innocent people" who may be mentioned in some of the content. I do think it may be possible to train tens of thousands of people to be able to discretely and quietly remove that kind of information which can do unintended harm, but it certainly wouldn't be easy.
What is the whole point of the secrecy
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Sell to whom? The information would all be out in the open anyway. I suppose that you have hundreds of people with "check user privileges" on Wikimedia projects who discretely log and sell everything they can get to interested parties too?
It isn't as if this information is being kept from those who would screw you over. It just isn't available to "the general public".
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You can't really wiki anything that requires secrecy.
I thought the "leaks" part of wikileaks was an indication that secrecy was what was being avoided. The whole point of the project was to be a conduit through which conscientious individuals could bring information to the public; information that an agency or corporation might be trying to hide because it would expose activities that are illegal, immoral, or harmful to the public welfare.
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Is the biggest leak in history destined to actually be the smallest thanks to infighting and problems at Wikileaks, I wonder?
I suspect that if it gets too mired someone will just release a full dump.
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Regardless of how you feel about it, this would seem to be a sign the US Government's tactics are working.
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I don't see how that follows. Most of the cables will be dull, and extracting good information tedious. Some initial keyword searches will pull up juicy gossip, eg "Iran". As you pick off the low hanging fruit, it will be harder and harder to find dramatic ones to release. The last one about US happy to let Japan kill whales is of passing interest, but hardly on the same level as Saudi Arabia wanting to bomb Iran. There may be a couple of bomb-shells being kept back, but probably not. The best stuff may alr
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C'mon Rush, don't hold back...
Why is this a surprise? A law was broken.. (Score:2, Informative)
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Once the information is in the public, it can't be made secret again.
I'd suggest somebody read a little used document I suppose, at least if you claim to be an American: The U.S. Constitution. Most particularly the first article of amendment. What WIkileaks is doing clearly falls within the realm of that document where congress is explicitly prohibited from making a law in the first place to restrict such speech.
Ooh, a law was broken! (Score:4, Insightful)
A law was broken? So what? You are probably breaking more than a dozen laws a week, just by living and breathing, taking shortcuts over the lane, missing some info on the tax report, etc. If someone is out to get you, they can easily find something on you, or fabricate evidence against you.
If you had any spine left in your body AC, you would ask yourself WHY someone put their LIFE on the line to disclose this information, and why someone else do EVERYTHING in their power to stop it..
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For military personel it is treason, for anyone else it is not. Especially when the group releasing the documents are not American, they have no duty to keep the secrets of foreign nations. Heck, you are not required to keep the secrets of your own goverment either. When the pentagon papers were published by the New York Times, and Nixon had them taken to court, the supreme court found 6-3 in favor of the New York Times publishing the documents.
"Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose
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And how is exposing corruption in the government treason? To me it looks a lot more like patriotism.
another straw on a mountain of straw (Score:2)
Isn't this normal? I mean if the government is building a case against Manning, they are probably going to subpoena companies that they think have evidence that will help their case. The three are hardly just "supporters" of Wikileaks, they were named producers of the "Collateral Murder" video.
If this were the police state people think the US has become, they wouldn't need subpoenas. The government would have just raided the place.
Normal for a hypocritical government perhaps - but other countries were denied access to US records and personnel when they were investigating serious crimes that actually did involve deaths (Nugan Hand coronial inquest and inquiry). When we want information - US says fuck you, when the US wants information the US says fuck you. This is not going to end well.
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If this were the police state people think the US has become, they wouldn't need subpoenas. The government would have just raided the place.
Yes, let's not pretend the USG doesn't respect the rules of national and international law. I mean it's not like they say f... the law whenever it suits them, it's not like we could accuse them of torture, illegal renditions, pressuring foreign governments into discontinuing criminal investigations against American officials, distorting or plain ignoring international law, unlawful killings of foreign citizens, holding people for years without any regard for any laws whatsoever, illegally spying on American
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It's not like we can't accuse them of violating the law in this very case.
Mannings is being held in inhumane conditions, and has been for several months. He's forbidden from exercising in his cell, he's kept in solitary confinement, he's forbidden from having sheets and pillow.
Basically, they took every single thing that a prison can do as punishment (Although he's been a model prisoner) and as safety (He is not even slightly suicidal or dangerous and there's no grounds for denying him bedsheets) and did